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A (Brief) Overview

Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann was born on September 17, 1826 in Breselenz, Hanover, Germany to a Lutheran Minister and his wife. According to sources, Riemann began showing signs of mathematical prodigy as early as age 6 when he began to proposing new math problems to his teachers after solving all that they could provide him. He is even said to have tried to mathematically validate the Book of Genesis before coming of age. By age ten, Riemann was taking math lessons from university professors who were stunned at receiving solutions better than their own from a child so young and gifted. A similar anecdote states that at age fourteen he invented a perpetual calendar and gave it to his parents as a gift.

Clearly, Riemann possessed an unusual aptitude for numbers, but was encouraged by his father to enroll at Göttingen in 1846 to study philology and theology. His father’s plan was for Riemann to become a member of clergy like himself, and Riemann, eager to please, took on this challenge. However, mathematics continued to be Riemann’s passion, and after taking a course at Göttingen, he grew interested in the mathematics of Carl Gauss, and asked for his father’s permission to change his field of study to math. He transferred to the University of Berlin and studied under famous professors including Jacobi, Steiner, Eisenstein, and Dirichlet, but transferred back to Göttingen in 1849 to work on his doctorate. Riemann received his Ph.D. degree at Göttingen two years later with a thesis dealing with the theory of complex functions and Gaussian mathematics.

Personality-wise, Riemann is known to have been extremely shy, giving himself extensive preparation before any public speaking engagement. This soon led to perfectionism which caused Riemann hide any piece of work from others until he was completely convinced that it was best. It is therefore unsurprising that Riemann’s dedication driven by perfection seems to have been crucial in his search to understand complex mathematics.

Throughout his short life, Riemann made a number of contributions to the field of mathematics, particularly on the work with which he followed up mathematicians Niels Abel and Augustin-Louis Cauchy in the area of complex equations. In 1859, Riemann was made a full professor at Göttingen but soon contracted tuberculosis and became seriously ill. He spent the last years of his life traveling between Göttingen and Italy, in search for a healthier climate. He died in Selasca, on the shores of Lake Maggiore (below) in Italy on June 16, 1866. He was 39 years old. One biographer has gone so far as to describe him as “one of the most profound and imaginative mathematicians of all time.”

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